When George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin, I was appalled by the number of people in my circle who blamed the victim for that crime. "Well, Zimmerman was scared. You can't blame him for defending himself." Zimmerman was scared? What about Trayvon? How could anyone not see that a teenage boy stalked by a full-grown man … Continue reading Say Their Names, but Also Create Change→

QuaranCon2020 is a virtual SFF con that was the brainchild of author Virginia McClean as a way to bring artists and fans together during the COVID-19 social isolation period. For me, it's been a blast.

Sarah Chorn’s Of Honey and Wildfires is a brilliant, literary fantasy that was meticulously researched. My review will be appearing soon on Fantasy-faction.com. In the meantime, I’m reblogging this terrific interview on LGBTQ+ people in the Old West.

Sarah Chorn’s upcoming novel, Of Honey and Wildfires (pre-order link, review), is a fantasy set in a place heavily inspired by the American Wild West. It’s also a novel with multiple queer characters, both in terms of gender and sexuality. I was thrilled when Sarah was willing to let me host a guest post she wrote, about the queer history of the real Wild West, which is an aspect of history that rarely seems to get mentioned in the history books.

Read to the end for a special giveaway announcement, too!

Without further ado, I’ll let Sarah’s words speak for themselves!

When I realized that all of my characters in Of Honey and Wildfires fell under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, I kind of panicked. You see, I don’t plan my characters. At all. I do not map them out. I don’t even usually have names for them that…

When the Purge began, Maitchen had been given a choice: become an Enforcer and let the Woern kill her in their own time, or have her throat cut then and there. Fifteen years ago, she’d chosen to keep breathing and do her part to heal the world of the Woern-borne madness.

Every time I look at my Goodreads page (and I look at it far more often than is good for my mental health), I wince at the answer to a question posed 3 years ago: Ouch. It's now two years later than that promised release date. In Episode 4 of Picard ("Absolute Candor"), a promise … Continue reading Promises, Promises→

A few months ago I started participating in a Twitter hashtag called #bookqw (Book Quote Wednesday), which I heard about from author/book blogger Sarah Chorn (BookwormBlues). In this weekly Tweet-fest, authors produce a quote containing the word of the week, and apropos of the holiday tomorrow, this week's word was HEART. As I was looking through … Continue reading Matters of the Heart—A Wizard’s Sacrifice Preview→

Today on Jesse Teller’s Friday the 13th series, he and I talk about space Nazis, my favorite moment with Kathleen Turner in the film “Romancing the Stone,” and what a film version of the Woern Saga would look like.

A.M. Justice is a Brooklyn-based author, lover of science and wit, sporadic scuba diver, and once and future tango dancer. Her characters live only in her head, but they’re real, and she puts them through hell.

1.Why storytelling? What made you yearn to tell a good story, and how long was this story within you before it came out?

This is embarrassing, especially on the blog of a guy with such a stunning scope of work, but I’ve been writing different versions of the Woern Saga for almost 40 years. Vic and her story have grown up alongside me, and we’ve traveled quite a distance from a naïve teenager longing for adventure to someone who tries to be a wise and compassionate observer of the human condition. (Of course, Vic is also a badass warrior, which I am decidedly not!)

Today, I’m joined in the reading room by A.M. Justice, author of A Wizard’s Forge.

Drew: So, first of all, thank you for joining us this evening. So tell us, what are you currently working on?

A.M.: The sequel to A Wizard’s Forge, a book called A Wizard’s Sacrifice. I’d planned/hoped to release it this year, but it’s been a bear and I’m still working on it.

Drew: Are you into the editing stage or still drafting?

A.M.: I’m revising based on beta reads and my editor’s suggestions. Forgive me for getting on my high horse, but I have to say how much I hate using the word “editing” when one means “revising.” A development editor may call his or her work an “edit” but that is providing the author with suggestions for REVISIONS the author must make to make the work better. An author “edits” at…

On March 2, we had our first real snow of Winter 2019 here in Brooklyn, and my daughter and I got ourselves organized and out of the house. We met up with another family for some sledding and snow-fort building in Prospect Park, and we were all really proud of our architectural masterpiece, built with … Continue reading One Snowy Day in March→